Regular silicone on a door gasket?????

[kevinmoelk]

I'm wondering if this is true. Found this tid bit of information in the maintainence section over at woodheat.org.


You can purchase gasket cement in a small tube or tub. If you can't find gasket cement don't despair. You can use common silicone sealant in a caulking tube. Some have said that silicone hardens the gasket sooner than stove cement, but that's not a clear consensus, so don't be afraid to try it. High temperature silicone is not necessary because the temperature rating of household grade seems to work well enough.

 

[wg_bent]

The difference between house hold silicone and high temp is like 100 degrees and red color. Poke around on the masonry heater page...they use it for all kinds of things. Holding doors on the heaters (for temp builds) to repairing cracks in heater channels. In one example they knew how hot the exhaust temp was because the silicone vaporized...it was a VERY high temp and they were using household stuff.

 

[elkimmeg]

I have seen RTV caulk melt and catch fire on stove vent pipe its temp range is for a few minutes at 500 degrees
cant see how common caulk can withstand inside temps of 1200 degrees

 

[Mike Wilson]

See, I would think household silicone would immediately begin to melt, exhaust horrible fumes, and then burst into flames before dripping some god awful plasti-residue all over my ash lip. I have to change my gaskets this month... hey MSG, what should I use on my insert???

-- Mike

 

[wg_bent]

I will add here, elk is right, it's not like 1200 degrees for interior temps. RTV may work fine for things like gaskets on engine blocks where temp is regulated by water. I was not advocating using it for what you suggested, only that high temp and regular silicone (not caulk) has very little temp handling difference. Using it as they do in the masonry heater applications on the surface may only see temps like 300 degrees so would be o.k. the stuff used to hold flue sections together did vaporize as I said. I'll have to look. The vaporization temp I thought was higher than 500 though. But you don't want your gaskets vaporizing on you. I did notice the gasket on my Osburn door is held in the the red silicone. Seems to be holding up fine.

 

[BrotherBart]

England Stove Works uses black silicone to attach the gaskets to their stove doors and they have gone through UL testing as well as burning the crap out of the stoves at Warnack Hersey for EPA tests.

And obviously a lot of real world installations.

 

[Shane]

I can't remember seeing a wood stove that used the silicone to hold the gasket rope. Whitfield pellet stoves do though. Regular household silicone I'm not sure about. I use RTV which is good to 650 or if in a pinch I use the 500 degree stuff we use to seal the DV pipe. Both work fine. I would be a little leary on a wood stove but if there are ones out there it could be worth an experiment.

 

[BrotherBart]

This stuff with the differences in silicone caulk sends me up a wall. I just cannot figure out how one 100% silicone is different from another 100% silicone. And the RTV designation stands for "room temperature vulcanization". Hey, all silicone caulks that I have ever seen vulcanize at room temperature!

 

[wg_bent]

This stuff with the differences in silicone caulk sends me up a wall. I just cannot figure out how one 100% silicone is different from another 100% silicone. And the RTV designation stands for "room temperature vulcanization". Hey, all silicone caulks that I have ever seen vulcanize at room temperature!

BB the diff between 100% silicone and 100% silicone is very subtle. Seriously, If one is red and the other is not...it's the red stuff. (not sure they claim 100% in that case do they?) But anyway, I understand the temp handling difference is quite small.

 

[Shane]

I'm not sure. All I know is that the red stuff states it will hold up to 650 and the clear or black says 500.